Movie Diary 7/18/2022

Mr. Jones (Agnieszka Holland, 2019). The film is imperfect, but its main problem was coming out three years too early: The subject is the Holodomor, the man-made 1932-33 famine in Ukraine caused by Soviet policies. We see it from the perspective of the Welsh journalist Gareth Jones (James Norton), who reported on the famine at the time; the film has special disdain for Walter Duranty (Peter Sarsgaard in his characteristic oily mode), the New York Times Moscow correspondent. Vanessa Kirby co-stars. It’s a movie about an issue, and it’s a powerful issue, but not without directorial interest.